Author: Max Waldburg
It might be tempting to offer incentives to your customers to leave reviews on your social media pages but the advice from the major social media and search engine providers is simple: Don’t do it! The temptation to do this began the moment businesses started to think about social media and what it could do for their bottom line. Typically businesses, particularly those operating outside of the hospitality industry, have felt that only customers that are unhappy with their service or product are likely to leave reviews. However we would argue that customers are willing to leave good reviews – they just need a bit more prompting. For businesses looking to increase their good reviews we recommend the following:
- Ask the client for a review directly (face-to-face) as soon as possible after delivering the product or service. Combat the inconvenience of leaving a review by giving them a business card containing links to various review sites. The representative asking for the review should be the person the client has been dealing with most often.
- Make leaving a review an alternative to tipping. If it is customary for your clients to leave tips, ask them to leave a review instead of leaving a tip. An example of how this might work could be getting the employee to say to a customer ‘if you leave a review and mention my name the company gives me a €10 bonus’.
- If email is the only means of asking for a review the email should:
- Come from an actual person or preferably, the representative that the client has been dealing with.
- Have a clear call to action link that requires the minimum amount of effort for the customer. For example where regular emails may contain multiple links to social media etc – they should be removed and replaced with one clear option (Facebook or Linkedin for example).
- Create an organisational initiative. This involves getting every member of an organisation to appreciate the importance of reviews even if they are not client facing. Employees that are client facing should be trained in how to ask for them. Getting the upper levels of management to appreciate the value of reviews is a key success factor.